


in hindsight, the A made it obvious

by deltacrow



Category: Assassin's Creed, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Clint Barton as an Assassin, Steve Rogers as an Assassin, alcohol use, brief mentions of nudity & sexual situations (the briefest i SWEAR), brief mentions of vomiting (relates to binge drinking & ineffective ways to get sober), shhhh im covering my bases ok, vague allusions to AC: Black Flag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-04
Updated: 2016-02-04
Packaged: 2018-05-18 03:42:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5896810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deltacrow/pseuds/deltacrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>short drabble about Clint having a startling revelation. private drinking and story-time ensue.</p><p>
  <i> “We are going to talk about this,” Clint yells in the general direction of Steve’s back. “Later!” </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	in hindsight, the A made it obvious

Clint blanches when he looks over at Cap. He knows that glint in his eye, the one that scans the ground for civilians and a soft landing.

 

To recap:

 

The Avengers get called out, something about Doom and AIM working together. Clint stops paying attention after "massive robot bees", because that's not his job. His job is point-and-shoot: you point, he shoots.

 

Clint had Tony, encased in the Iron Man Mark What-the-fuck-ever, drop him off on a high-rise apartment building. (There's too many of them in New York City, he'll find out which one in the after-mission debriefing.) The bees swarmed on Iron Man's location, presumably targeting the suit and the arc reactor — because when isn't someone doing  _ that _ _ — _ when Thor deposited Cap on the next roof. Cap fired a few rounds into the swarm — crowd — thing. 

 

Cap holstered his gun as the bees that hadn't gotten shot retargeted him, so Clint fired an EMP arrow into the cloud. It stuck into the chinks of some metallic armor thing then detonated, killing the cloud around Cap. Cap saluted at Clint, Clint saluted back, and that's where we left off.

 

Clint knows those eyes because he's seen them in the mirror, in most reflective surfaces before he jumps, and in most of his old teachers.

 

" _ Do not jump. _ "

 

_ "This is rich," _ Nat murmurs into her comm unit,  _ “from you.” _ Of course she says that while electrocuting robots, hardly breaking a sweat. She can never look less than composed when she makes Clint the butt of a joke.

 

_ "I've done worse," _ Cap replies, eyes never leaving the ground.

 

"It got your ass dumped in the Potomac! Do not lie to me, Rogers—"

 

_ "Hawkeye—" _

 

"You can't just— just  _ take a leap of faith  _ without anything to break your fall!"

 

He readies his shield — sweet merciful Christ — and as Clint is jumping onto the second rooftop, he does a  _ textbook perfect  _ leap off the edge of the highrise, slamming his shield into a bee before bouncing off of the metallic carcass. Clint hears the crunch of metal crumpling under metal, and sees the bee, legs twitching, its stinger impaled into the concrete next to Cap, who is dusting off his uniform.

 

"We are  _ talking  _ about this — " Clint screams, because  _ what the fuck _ . Captain America is a Capital-A Assassin.  _ So many things make sense now,  _ Clint sighs to himself as he readies another three arrows and fires them off in rapid succession. This day could only get crazier if, like, Thor and Banner were Templars. And even  _ that's _ a stretch.

 

Cap laughs into his earpiece and flings his shield at another robot bee. The battle continues with mindless explosions and more death-defying stunts.

 

It feels very choreographed, Clint thinks, detached, as he jumps haphazardly off of the roof and fires another arrow.

 

—- —-

 

Cap shucks his cowl and becomes Steve, blue eyes amused and wary. "What did you want to—"

 

Clint throws a hand over Steve's mouth,"Not  _ here _ , numbskull!" Clint waves his free hand around to the open street.

Steve quirks an eyebrow and mumbles, “I’m not entirely sure that car fire cares about what we have to say.”, and then  _ licks Clint’s hand _ . (This is because Steve doesn’t understand that being underhanded and frankly  _ gross _ is reserved for himself and Tony, the shortest and admittedly most childish on the team.)

 

“You’re  _ disgusting,  _ Rogers!” Clint yells. Steve breaks into a jog when Clint tries to wipe his hand on Steve’s uniform, but he manages to gain enough distance so that Clint will never catch up without some very creative climbing coming into play. Clint stomps on the ground and wipes super soldier-spit off on his pants, making faces as he does so. 

 

And then he remembers needing to talk to Steve about his Assassin-ing skills and instantly wants to beat his head into the wall in front of him.

 

_ “ _ We are going to talk about this,” Clint yells in the general direction of Steve’s back.  _ “Later!” _

 

—- —-

 

Steve is a communal drinker. He got so used to Bucky keeping him away from alcohol on account of his low tolerance — no matter how much he ate beforehand, or how much he drank water or threw up afterward, he could never get more than a few sips in before being  _ gone _ _ — _ and now his body just plows through alcohol too fast for him to get properly soused. But he enjoys the camaraderie that the Howlies, his Brothers, and now the Avengers have. (Even if he is a little worried about Tony.)

 

But tonight, Clint pilfers a six-packs of Angry Orchard and half a bottle of tequila from the bar and, bottle tucked under his arm, leads Steve to his apartment. Steve is not getting out of this one— well, he  _ could _ , but that would be mean. Especially after this morning.

 

The elevator ride is mostly silence and awkward shuffling. When the doors slide open, Clint signals for JARVIS to cease monitoring, and then shoves the bottle into Steve’s hands.

 

He twists around Steve in a spin move and flings his arms out to jam the elevator. Steve nearly fumbles the tequila bottle before cracking up. 

 

“Alright, alright,  _ geez _ ,” Steve snorts. “It’s not even a good story!”

 

“Yeah, well,” Clint grumbles, tucking his arms back in. The elevator door hisses shut behind him. “No margaritas for you then.”

 

“You have lime juice?”

 

Clint squints, and turns back to Steve. “When  _ don't _ I have lime juice?”

 

—- —-

 

“So Bucky was an army brat, right? His Pa and mine went to Basic together,” Steve starts, “and part’a his family — they go  _ way  _ back, yeah?”

 

Clint tosses a tangerine at Steve's head. Clint has been laying on his kitchen island, lazily tossing up and catching fruit from the bowl next to him, occasionally sitting up to nurse at his margarita. 

 

Steve takes another swig of his cider. There's something about apple-y things that make storytelling easier. It's a reminder of fall and crackling fires and drawing shadows, he thinks.

 

“So Bucky grew up with this shit, y’know? His Pa heard things from his Da who heard stuff from  _ his _ Da — they say somewhere there was a pirate, way back in his family, but I'm not so sure.” Steve laughs. “Y’aughta be able to  _ swim  _ then, right?”

 

“Dunno, man; swimming's overrated.”

 

“You can't swim?”

 

“I mean, I  _ can _ , but is smelling like wet garbage  _ worth  _ it?”

 

“Fuck you!” Steve laughs. “I jump into Jamaica Bay  _ once _ , and 80 years later—”

 

“ _ —no one lets you live it down!”  _ Clint choruses with Steve. (They never have, honestly, because giving him shit about jumping into New York City’s gross waterways seems to leech away some of the pain of Erskine’s death for Steve.) “You're stalling, you old fart!” Clint throws his tangerine at Steve and cackles. Steve bats it away and it splatters in the floor.

 

They stare suspiciously at one another and at the tangerine, daring the other to move. “So! Bucky moves in—”

 

“Clean that up, asshole, before it stains the carpet—”

 

“—into the building—”

 

“—you're fucking—!”

 

“Bucky moves into the building next door!”

 

Clint grumbles and rolls off the island for the Windex. Steve beams like a child. “You're a goddamn child and I hate you,” Clint grumbles.

 

—- —-

 

Steve is a goddamn rollercoaster, Clint thinks. Constantly moving and doing, hands haphazard and jerkish as he talks about Bucky teaching him how to fall.

 

“He looks at me, right, dead in the eye, and says,  _ ‘falling’ll do you a damn sight better than punching someone, Stevie,’ _ and when I tell ‘em  _ ‘what the hell kinda brawls you been in?’,  _ he says,  _ ‘as many as you have! You can't end one without me!’ _ ”

 

Clint snorts, leaning back to dodge an exasperated hand toss. He knocks back the rest of his margarita, and swipes the dregs of Steve's cider from him. “Fuckin’ harsh, man. Didn't pull his punches, did he?”

 

“Nah,” Steve sighs. “Nah... He really didn't, I guess.”

 

Steve has this look on his face that means he's remembering something that is best looked at never. Clint's head is screaming  _ abort  _ while also screaming for more alcohol. “What'd you even do?”

 

“Hah?”

 

“This all sounds like pre-beefcake Steve. What'd you do, if you weren’t wetworks?”

 

“Oh, man, do they not show examples anymore? Buck said they showed examples!” Steve looks like a gremlin, mania lighting his eyes like sparklers. Clint needs to know what that look means before it blows up in his face, because that is the face of spectacular explosions and fiery deaths that he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to regret. He wonders what exactly Steve could have been talking about, what could have possibly been shown to Clint during training and initiation that tiny-Steve could have had a hand in—

 

And then it hits him. “Oh, God,” he breathes, “that was  _ you _ ?” Clint has wanted to shake that person’s hand for years now. “You—did you  _ draw  _ those, too, or was it just—”

 

“You bet,” Steve beams, and cracks open another bottle of cider. “Every last bit!” Steve takes a sip and savours Clint’s gobsmacked face. “Not as hard as you’d think, to get references. Not like the internet, mind, but it  _ was _ the Depression.”

 

“You—you drew  _ porn mags _ . For  _ official correspondence. _ ”

 

“S’not like people went for the next crack in the Enigma ciphers in Tijuana bibles, y’know?”

 

_ “Shake my hand, you glorious bastard.” _

 

—- —- 


End file.
